Teresa Medeiros (8 page)

When he swung back around, Sabrina recoiled with fresh horror.

Morgan was smiling.

As if that weren’t enough to stun her, this was no ordinary smile. It held not even a trace of the mockery or maddening arrogance she had come to expect from him. This was a boyish grin, devastating in its openness. It crinkled his face in all the right places and cut to her heart faster than a blade. It was the smile Hades might have given Persephone before sweeping her off to the underworld. The smile Satan might have leveled on Christ to tempt him in the wilderness. Neither chains nor bars could contain it. A woman would do anything for a smile like that. Anything at all. He padded toward the bars and the fear that she was being stalked turned to terror.

His voice softened to a husky purr that stroked her staggering senses. “I thought I was dreamin’ when
I looked up to see you standin’ there. Or that I’d died and gone to heaven.”

Sabrina couldn’t resist cocking a skeptical eyebrow. Had she not been blistered by the intensity of his charm, she would have burst into laughter at his sheer gall. But some mischievous part of her wanted to see just how far he’d take this charade.

She shuffled her feet modestly. “You more likely thought you’d been banished to hell to find such an ugly imp peering through the bars at you.”

His palm flew to his heart as if her words had wounded him. “Don’t dare to jest so, lass. Even the angels must weep with jealousy at your loveliness.”

Sabrina was tempted to peer behind him to see if Angus’s ghost was talking while Morgan moved his mouth. “The angels need have no fear of me. As a certain boy once took great delight in reminding me, I am far from lovely.” The lightness of her voice belied the pain of the memory as she counted off her faults on her fingers. “My lips are too puffy, my neck too scrawny. My ears point heavenward like the basest of elves, and my nose puts one in mind of Pugsley.”

His remorseful gaze never made it past her lips. “Ah, but those were the taunts of a foolish boy. I’m not a boy anymore, Sabrina. I’m a man.”

Her name rolled from his lips like song. She wasn’t sure what jolted her more—hearing him address her as something besides brat, or his blunt stating of the obvious. With the plaid draped low across his narrow hips and the taut knitting of bone and muscle in his chest exposed, the nature of his sex could have been no more evident had he let the plaid fall in a pool at his feet.

Her heart thudded into a traitorous rhythm at the vision. She lowered her eyes, hating that she wasn’t as immune to his cunning as she’d hoped. She wanted to end it. She didn’t want to know how far he’d go to achieve his mercenary ends. She feared she already knew.

Tilting her head, she affected a winsome smile
and played her final card. “I didn’t come here to gawk or gloat, Morgan. I came to offer my help.”

He crooked a finger at her, luring her nearer the cell. She sidled toward him as if it were only maidenly shyness keeping her out of his reach. His hands closed over the bars, his fingers sliding up and down in a calculated stroke that made her skin dance.

“I’ll not ask much of you, lass. If you’ll just bring me the pistol I entrusted to your tender care, I’ll be out of your da’s hair in a trice.” His voice softened to a rough whisper. “Please, Sabrina. I need you.”

His words reverberated through her soul like the echo of a forgotten dream. How many times had she risked his scorn for the chance to hear them? And if she brought him his precious pistol, what would he do? Probably shoot her through her foolish heart with it. Wry anger spilled through her.

“I swear I’ll take care not to hurt any of your kin,” he continued, coaxing and seducing with that glib devil’s tongue of his. “I’ll just put the gun right here under my plaid—”

“May I suggest a better hiding place?” she inquired sweetly. “It won’t be quite as comfortable, but I can promise you the guards won’t think to look there.”

Morgan looked as shocked as if an angel had snapped her wings at him and started spewing profanity. His smile vanished. A black scowl split his brow. His fists clenched on the bars, looking more inclined to throttle than caress. Despite her trepidation, Sabrina wasn’t surprised to learn she liked this Morgan far better than his duplicitous twin.

She took a step backward, wary of the flex and ripple of his chest muscles. “It seems in your past perusal of my chubby lips and pointy ears, you forgot one thing—a brain. I have one. Tell me, does that oily pandering actually work on the ladies of your acquaintance?”

“Don’t know any ladies,” he admitted, managing to look sulky, sheepish, and thoroughly dangerous at the same time.

“Then with what tender phrases do you woo the lasses?”

“ ‘Bend over’ usually does it,” he snapped.

Sabrina’s hand fluttered to her throat as if it could stymie the disturbing images his words provoked. “I’m not playing games with you, Morgan. I came here to help you. But not to offer pistols or knives or even keys. Aren’t you sick of all the bloodshed? What’s going to happen when the rest of your clan marches out of the mountains and lays siege to Cameron? More fighting? More dying? If you’d only give my father time to prove his innocence, you’d be able to convince your clan of it as well. They’d listen to you. You’re their chieftain now. If you weren’t so blasted stubborn—”

A choked sound from the cell stopped her. Morgan had covered his head with his folded arms. His big shoulders quaked. He threw back his head and roared with a laughter so black and devoid of mirth that it raised the hairs at Sabrina’s nape. Tears streamed from his eyes, but when she saw the hopelessness reflected in their depths, she wondered if they weren’t tears of another kind altogether.

“The
rest
of my clan?” he echoed. “Oh, that’s rich, lass. It seems the Camerons will have the last laugh after all, because there are no more of us. Those prancin’, pipin’ fools on the hill are all that’s left. All died off, the others have, and now my own da’s gone to join them. He’s probably wenchin’ in hell right now and havin’ a good laugh at my expense. I’m the chieftain, all right. The chieftain of nothin’!”

Sabrina was stunned. She couldn’t even fathom the death of her clan. Clan Cameron numbered in the hundreds, each man farming his own plot in the glen, swearing fealty to her father, even taking his name as their own before God and man in a ceremony as quaint and timeless as that of the tenderest wedding.

To be clanless in the Highlands was to be no less than the basest of outcasts.

Morgan’s gaze met hers. “I believed I wouldn’t crawl, but I was wrong. I would have crawled for them.
I would have died for them. They’re all I have. All I am.”

Would any man ever declare himself for her with such passion and fervency? she wondered. Her heart lurched to realize Morgan wanted peace even more than her father did. His very existence depended on it. And now all his hopes had died at the brutal, cunning hands of Angus’s murderer.

She started for the cell, wanting to offer him comfort even if it was only the press of her fingers through the bars.

“Don’t
!” he roared.

Sabrina froze. Here at last were the grief and rage he’d kept leashed inside him, boiling from his eyes in molten warning. His chains rattled, the manacles no more than fragile iron bracelets as he flexed his mighty arms.

“Don’t,” he repeated. “Don’t come near the bars.” Then more softly, “Don’t you know what I could do to you?”

Sabrina thrust her hands into her pockets to hide their trembling. A faint warmth still emanated from one of them. She drew out the linen package she had wrapped with such care.

Morgan stood unmoving as she took one step toward the bars, then another, refusing to meet his eyes lest she lose her courage. Another step would put her within his reach.

She took it, bracing herself for the whip of the chain around her throat. When it didn’t come, she knelt and laid her offering just outside the bars, where he could reach it without straining. The angular flare of his calves and wide-boned feet filled her vision.

She smoothed back the edges of the crested napkin, freeing the spicy aroma of ginger and molasses. “I remembered how gingerbread was always your favorite. You used to drive the cook mad, stealing it from the kitchen before it cooled.”

Fearful of the scorn she might read on his face, she turned and started up the tunnel. A mouse was already creeping out of his nest to investigate. He stood
up on his hind legs, whiskers twitching as he whiffed the air. At least someone would benefit from her folly, she thought, dashing away a stray tear before Morgan could see it.

Morgan’s fingers bit into the bars as he watched Sabrina go. His gaze dropped to the generous slab of cake at his feet, then shot back to the end of the tunnel, where Sabrina paused to peer both ways before plunging into the darkness. His gaze drifted to the cake again. His nostrils twitched at its pungent scent. His stomach contracted with hunger. The mouse inched toward the napkin, its tiny claws skittering on the stones.

Sabrina darted past the mouth of the tunnel again, flitting like a ghost through the oily blackness. Morgan watched her patter past three more times before growling an oath under his breath.

“Woman!” he barked.

Silence, then she reappeared, her face a pale oval against the darkness. Morgan wrenched his candle from its sconce, tearing loose its tallow moorings, and thrust it through the bars.

“Take it.”

“Oh, but I really couldn’t. You’d be left in the dark until the guards returned and—”

“Take it!” he repeated. “I want you the hell out of here. You’re ruinin’ my bloody appetite.”

Their fingers brushed as she took the candle from him. Neither of them paid any attention to the spatter of hot tallow against their skin. She cupped her palm around the flame, stubbornly refusing to let the draft seize it.

“Brat?” he whispered, wanting to give her something more for all she had given him. A grimy candle couldn’t compare to the courage it must have taken for her to creep into this damp hell and offer him comfort for his grief.

“Yes, Morgan?” she answered primly.

“Tell your mother the next time she points a gun at a MacDonnell, she’d best take care ’tis loaded with more than feathers. Alex ambushed me countless times with that toy when we were but lads.”

Sabrina blinked up at him, her eyes so wide and confounded, he was afraid he might kiss her. He reached through the bars and gave her a gentle shove toward the mouth of the tunnel.

Then she was gone, taking the light with her.

Morgan gripped the bars, haunted by the seeds of doubt she’d planted in his mind. Had his hatred of the Camerons blinded him more surely than the darkness? What if she were right? What if it was not a Cameron hand that had wielded the blade that killed his father, but the hand of a treacherous stranger? Even as he pondered her words, he cursed her beauty. If it hadn’t been for the distraction of her comely face, he would have been noting the comings and goings in the hall prior to his father’s death with his usual thoroughness for detail.

Part of him still could not believe Angus was dead. His grief was tinged with bitterness. In his mouth lay the ashes of a lifetime of words bitten back and left unspoken. Now that his father was gone, he had no choice but to swallow them.

Morgan crouched and groped through the bars until his fingers found the warm, crumbly mass of cake. A furry body brushed his hand and shied away, squeaking in protest.

“Hush now, wee fellow,” he murmured. “I’ll not rob you of your fair share.” He tore off a corner of the gingerbread, then smiled to hear the satisfied scrabbling that followed.

For the next few minutes Morgan hunched against the bars, cramming fingerfuls of gingerbread into his mouth. Long after it was gone, he found its taste still tempered the bitterness of his grief with sweetness.

Dougal was in the solar a week after Angus’s murder, polishing the blade of the claymore he’d found mysteriously stuffed beneath the Egyptian settee, when his wife stormed in, slamming the door behind her with enough force to waver the candle flames.

She blew a coppery tendril out of her eyes. “I do hope you’re sharpening that blade to use on Morgan MacDonnell’s thick neck.”

Dougal lifted an eyebrow, half wishing his clansmen could see her now. As their mistress, she was the very model of genteel decorum. Her soft-spoken commands brooked no disobedience, yet only in his presence did all of her fire leap to the surface. Dougal delighted in it, for with that fire came the bright, burning passions of a woman, not a lady.

He removed a gilded mirror from above the mantel and hung the sword in its place, admiring the addition of its clean masculine lines to this feminine
domain. “Is there something you wish to discuss, dear?” he asked mildly.

With a wordless exclamation of rage, Elizabeth whirled to pace the room, her pagoda sleeves rippling with each step. Her hands darted out, caressing her delicate treasures as if to derive comfort from them.

She had beautiful hands, their tapered lines broken only by his ruby betrothal ring. They were an artist’s hands, God-designed not for painting or sculpting, but for nursing the living things in her garden. Dougal would have sworn he’d seen roses unfurl their petals toward the sun at the faintest brush of her fingertips. After twenty-three years of marriage, her touch still had the same effect on him.

She spun around. “It’s been seven days and you’ve done nothing. A hundred years ago you might have been master and king of these lands, but we are under English law now. Why haven’t you summoned the soldiers and had him taken away?”

Dougal wished he were a king. He needed the wisdom of a Solomon to make the decision confronting him. Some stubborn ancestral spirit recoiled at the image of English redcoats invading his home. “On what charge, Beth? Grief? Helpless rage at watching his own da cut down before his eyes? Those are transgressions in neither the eyes of the king nor the Lord.”

“What about the transgression he committed against your daughter? She’s hardly touched her food since. I hear her pacing her chamber at all hours of the night. Why, she may never recover!”